Re: Rant 101- pirates killing ____? (AppleWorks 5.2/6.0!)

[pkillian@NMSU.edu (PJ Killian)]

In article <357F73E5.BB292DF@swbell.net>, rubywand@swbell.net wrote:
> The Law, in fact, backs Asimov.

Oh?

I don't claim to be an expert in copyright law, but this makes no sense to
me. Aren't copyright laws there for the protection of resellers as much as
authors?

If I buy a hundred thousand books and give photocopies away to whoever
wants them, I am hurting Barnes and Noble's bottom line. Are you seriously
proposing that Barnes and Noble (as the reseller) has no legal recourse
against someone who is giving away bootleg books? Odd, to say the least. I
would like to see a citation from US copyright law and/or hear from a
genuine lawyer before I believe this one. It strikes me that so long as
someone, somewhere is attempting to make money off of a piece of software,
his or her business is pretty demonstrably hurt by the existance of free
software available to anyone with an Internet account.

Insofar as Asimov is used largely by people with emulators trying to do
very limited things (like play a game that they just couldn't finish 10
years ago), I doubt that this business is being hurt particularly badly. In
fact, I would venture to say that the losses incurred by resellers of Apple
II software because of the existance of emulators and people running disk
images from Asimov on those emulators is so perilously close to zero as to
be negligible. But that should not and does not change the fact that the
authors of the programs on those images (or their designees) own their
creations for seventy-five years and nobody but they have the right to
determine how they can be distributed so far as the law is concerned. You
can argue all day as to whether that is the way things should be, it won't
change how things are.

I think that (all things considered) Asimov is performing a valuable
service, at least to the emulator crowd, and I would strongly prefer it not
go away. But I don't think people should kid themselves as to the legality
of what they're doing. Like I said, pony up a citation, something tangible
that can be looked up, and I'll admit I'm wrong, but I don't think it's
really likely to happen.

-- 
PJ Killian
pkillian at nmsu dot edu